o2b.net : Tim Murtaugh

When you first install an OS, or a new browser, or get a new computer, the first time you launch your web browser it has a home page assigned (in IE’s case it’s MSN, for Firefox I think it’s the FF Google Search page).

I understand why the browser-maker wants me to have one, but why would I want one?

Perhaps it’s because I’m on my computer all day, every day. I use the web for a multitude of tasks, so I can’t imagine one site that I would want to see every time I load up the browser. Perhaps a home page is useful for someone who’s not so connected to their PC — someone who goes online to check email or weather or news.

But for me? I tried having Google as my home page for a while, but I still begrudged the two seconds I had to wait for it to load. For all my browsers (at last count, Safari, Firefox (2 platforms), IE6, IE5 (three flavors, two platforms), Netscape 7 (two platforms)) I set the home page to be blank. No wasted time or bandwidth.

I bring this up because of this blog entry by a former IE developer. He recently switched to Firefox, and outlines his reasons why he weeps for IE.

He also describes some weaknesses (as he sees them) in FF, and one of them is that…

Firefox goes against IE behavior and starts each browser instance from scratch. IE intentionally brings the browser history into the new window: the bet being that users who want to continue from where they left off can, and those that want to go their home page can do that with one click.

This is one of my pet peeves of IE — whenever you hit Ctrl-N to open a new window, it re-opens the page you were viewing in the original window. This has always seemed like bizarre behavior to me. I’m opening a new window, why in the world would I want to re-open the page I already have open? Along with it comes possibly all its images, all its ads, all its javascript (which may break having been taken into a new window). All this means I will have to wait to perform the function that I opened the new window for in the first place. (All of this would be a little less annoying if IE’s Stop button worked consistently. But it doesn’t.)

I’m realizing now that this has very little to do with the home page I started talking about, but whatever. You get what you pay for.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 15th, 2005 at 6:17 pm and is filed under Browsers, Tech, Usability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.